You Never Needed To
by Sencha-san
Summary: TenTen was never sure how to deal with herself...or anybody else, for that matter. How do you deal with pain that you don't know is there?


The first time I ever heard about it, was I disgusted? Was I distressed?

Or did I secretly admire the courage one would have to have in order to dig a knife into their own skin?

Whatever I thought, I most certainly wouldn't have imagined doing it myself.

Of course, I never thought that my mama would fall in love with a complete pervert, or that I would have to live up to perfection.

He always was better than me…at everything. I accepted that very soon after we were put on the same team, but it still made me bitter. Even the one thing that I prided myself on, he would be better. I couldn't measure up if I wanted to. But I lived with it.

My parents had problems for years, and I felt like I was the only one who saw Mama falling away. I saw her make friends with a person that I didn't like, for inexplicable reasons. I saw the talk they gave me coming, and I thought I had accepted the fact that she was leaving us.

It wasn't my fault. It couldn't have been, right?

I stayed at Mama's ratty apartment one night. Just to be polite, because she cried when I told her that I didn't want to, the last time she asked.

Someone opened my door when I was almost asleep, and just closed it again. It wasn't very long before the noises started.

Laying there, I just prayed to any god who was willing to listen to _make it stop._

Mama left him because I told her that I wouldn't stay with her anymore while that guy was in the house. Papa and I both knew that she was planning to get back together with him once he got a job.

Then, my mom asked my dad to help find out what was wrong with her computer. Papa enlisted my perfect teammate to help him. I was doing something else at the time, so I didn't lend a hand. But…

I will never forget the look on their faces when I saw them again.

Neither of them ever told me what they found on that computer, but I found out through a person Papa confided in.

Child porn.

As far as I know, Mama cut off every tie she had to that guy. She reported him through an anonymous service, but I dunno what happened, or if they ever caught him.

There was a box. A big glass box that I found my self trapped in, something that prevented me from _living_. I saw life go by, but I never lived with it.

It might have even existed before my parents split. It might have started building itself when that boy started teasing me, in the Academy. All I knew is that I hadn't felt alive in a long time.

In order to experience _emotion_ again. That's why I hid a serrated knife in my room, and started scratching myself.

I never went very deep. Just enough to draw blood, was all I was willing to do

I wasn't depressed, or mental. I just had a problem, and I though the solution was cutting. To teach myself a lesson.

I thought it was cool. I though it was interesting.

I am sick.

To think that way…is nonsense.

One day, I saw Yamanaka Ino and her father out to lunch. I looked at them and saw them laughing and loving each other in a way that I knew my Papa was incapable of.

I found my self in Training ground 27, sitting in a tree, crying as hard as I knew how. I felt furious jealousy for that stupid Yamanaka…I screamed into my knees with all the hate I could find in myself, for her, and Mama, and Neji, and everything else in my life. Everything that I know deserves hate. It's all their fault.

I had calmed myself into shaking wuffles, rather than full-blown sobs, when I finally lifted my aching head from my knees.

And I saw Rock Lee sitting across from me.

I don't even like him. He's annoying, and he has bad fashion sense. I might have admired him once, but that was before he started tailing after our sensei like an ugly duckling.

I just looked at him for a few moments, staring silent murder into his bulbous eyes.

"I'm not leaving until you tell me what's wrong." he said to me.

I don't know what came over me. I had meant to tell him to mind his own _fucking_ business, but all of a sudden I was sobbing into his large, strong chest, telling him all my frustrations about my parents, and Neji, and everything else I swore only me and my diary would know.

Everything except the one thing I never told my diary. The one Thing that I thought was insignificant enough that it wouldn't need to know.

Lee gently grabbed my left arm, and turned it over.

"Would this," he said, running a finger over one of the pink scratches, "have something to do with it?"

For one terrifying moment, I couldn't say anything. He had seen what no one else had wanted to look at. He had dug up my one secret, the one that I thought I could deal with.

I shoved my head into his chest again and whimpered.

He pulled me back, forcing me to look in his eyes, which no longer looked stupid and childish. I fact they looked…angry.

Not like the anger that he demonstrates regularly, the kind when he's defending his "way of the ninja", or Gai-sensei, but genuine, piercing, violent _anger_.

I couldn't move for fear. Fear of what…I'm not sure.

"TenTen." he whispered, and I could hear the desperation and sadness in his voice, along with that burning fury.

"_Tell me."_

"…_**yes."**_

For a while he just held me while I cried a little more. Then, all of a sudden, I noticed something wet on my head.

Lee was crying. Over_ me._

My chest ripped down the middle. I didn't deserve to have him be sad because of me.

It hurt. Lee had ripped all my walls and my lies, and now…

Now, I had discovered that he cared enough to be hurt by _my_ self-destruction.

Lee, I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I know you told me not to apologize, but I'm so, so _sorry._

I'm not healed, but at least I've admitted that I have a problem. Now I can get help.

_Forgive me._

888888888888888888

A.N. This story is loosely based on personal experience…except for a few details, both major and minor.

I am definitely making a _lot_ of assumptions about TenTen's life. But, she's the one character who has the least amount of development, I think. She doesn't even have a surname, for Pete's sake!! So I guess I kind of made up my own story for her. (And come on…working with a perfect genius like Neji has to be straining _sometimes_, right?)

You can like it or not. I really don't care. This is more a character study for me than TenTen.


End file.
